


Tenderness And Virtue

by thisiswhatthewatergaveme



Series: A Kingdom, A Castle [2]
Category: The Originals (TV), The Vampire Diaries (TV)
Genre: Angst and Fluff and Smut, Canon-Typical Violence, Dom/sub, Feelings, M/M, Mild Kink, Mildly Dubious Consent, Not Canon Compliant, but not in that order, less so than the first one I think
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-23
Updated: 2019-09-23
Packaged: 2020-10-26 21:07:37
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,423
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20748764
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thisiswhatthewatergaveme/pseuds/thisiswhatthewatergaveme
Summary: Acres of lonely, mountains of tenderness.A night in the dark becomes a day in the light.





	Tenderness And Virtue

**Author's Note:**

> Klaus expects the worst, Marcel the best. The reader should expect smut.

He’s filthy. The stone below him is cold, as are the manacles, as are the occasional breezes that find him, the stench of Louisiana in the summer, heat and fester, and a slight patina of yesterday’s liquor. 

He’s thinking about mistakes. 

It’s hard not to, when Marcel had walked away, after, head high and back straight, not a word to him, not the slightest bit out of step, out of breath. 

Klaus shook for what felt like hours after, tremors of desire, of anger, of disappointment, wrapped in sense memory, overpowering. 

And now— again— abandoned— shame on him. He knows better. Next time he’ll meet him with his teeth. Next time, next time. 

He’s half-awake when there are footsteps on the stairs again. He isn’t surprised to see Marcel. Relieved, maybe. Thankful, to his own tentative shame. 

“Come on,” he says, and dashes his foot through the outline on the floor. Klaus is too slow to stand, and so Marcel brings him to his feet— with force, but not enough to hurt. Enough to make sure Klaus remembers where the power is, here; where the strength it. He shivers. 

“Easy,” Marcel says. 

“Do I at least get a shower before you parade me around again like a show dog?” 

Marcel huffs out a laugh. Klaus doesn’t understand why until they’re walking through his own bedroom, untouched except by dust, and his bathroom, much the same. 

“The whole house is warded,” Marcel says, and, with a phrase said so low and so fast that Klaus misses it, his shackles fall away. “So is every door,” Marcel continues. “Every window. Every wall. Try and leave, it won’t go well for you. Don’t overstep.” And he steps away. 

Klaus waits. 

And waits. 

“Oh,” he says, after what feels like too long. “Are you planning on watching? If I’d known that’s what you were interested in...” 

Marcel laughs. “Don’t be a jackass. Fine. I’ll be outside.” 

Klaus wasn’t, he realizes, when the door closes between them, expecting him to go. It fills him with a quiet sort of disappointment, until the embarrassment chases that away. He’s quick with his ablutions, and it’s nice to get the dust off of him, the grit out of his hair. Everything else. But he doesn’t dawdle. Can’t; he’s waiting for the other shoe to drop. Waiting to see what happens. 

He goes out with the towel around his waist; there’s no way around it, and no way he’s putting the rags he’d been wearing back on. 

Marcel is leaning against the wall in a way he’d call posing on anyone else. But not him—on him, it’s just waiting. Just taunting. Klaus wonders, distantly, if this is a way to get him to hate himself. 

“Is this the part where you take advantage? Again,” he adds, after a moment’s consideration. Might as well push it. 

“I could always put you back,” Marcel says. 

“That’s what it’s going to be, then?” And this— this is comfortable. A give and take he understands, knows how to process; he walks up to Marcel and knows what he looks like, vulnerable in his nakedness, hair curling across his forehead, open, waiting—

Marcel stops him with a hand on his chest. “Get dressed,” he says. And makes as if to step outside. 

“Was it supposed to be a surprise?” Klaus taunts. “Should I wait until I’m pinned against a bannister? A table, maybe? A wall?” 

He doesn’t know what’s worse, he thinks, throwing on his clothes in a hurry, ignoring the dampness of his limbs. The idea that Marcel might take liberties, or the idea that he won’t when they’re offered. This is supposed to be simple. It was simpler downstairs, chained and alone. This... he’s spoiling for a fight. He feels a familiar feeling— an instinct to ruin, to break, him or someone else, anyone, any tender belly. 

“Am I to follow you around my house, waiting for answers?” Klaus demands, when he finds Marcel again, standing by the stairs, impassive— not in a way that means it. He seems calm, undisturbed, happy enough. Klaus is tense, clearly disturbed, miserable. He wants— something. 

“Not your kingdom, not your castle,” Marcel says easily. “Are you hungry?” 

“What is this?” Klaus demands, and pushes him. It’s not enough to do any damage— definitely not enough to damage him— but it knocks out a dent in the stone wall behind them, and it makes Marcel scowl. 

“I only—”

“Enough,” Klaus spits. “So much for Marcellus, the kindly jailer— you have me at your mercy, you’ve already demonstrated as much. How do you plan to do it again? To restrain me? To make me say...” His breath is coming faster— too fast. His hands shake. His voice threatens to do the same. “You’d show me what I could have, wouldn’t you? If I only kissed the ring, if I only bent over— and if I say no, what then? What new tortures might you invent for your own pleasure?” 

There’s a thrill in his blood when Marcel stalks closer to him. He’s waiting for something. He is waiting for their breaking point. 

“The doors,” Marcel says, “the windows, the walls— all warded. This isn’t a trap.  _ I  _ pulled the knife out.  _ You  _ told me you wanted— ” He closes his eyes. “If that wasn’t the case. If I... I didn’t...I wouldn’t have...”

“Stop,” Klaus says, a little desperately. “You call yourself a king—” 

When Marcel’s eyes open again, they’re flat. When he turns away, Klaus feels no less than panic. 

“Where are you going?” 

“For a walk,” Marcel says, and he’s down the stairs and in the atrium before Klaus can catch him— for all that he tries, he’s underfed, his muscles drier than they have been for decades. Still—he catches him, in the middle of the floor, clips him just enough to send him into another wall— another chunk of stone. 

“You call yourself a king,” he says again, and hits him. It doesn’t do anything; he’s hardly sure it lands. His fist hits something, but then he’s slung to the floor, hard enough to knock the breath out of him, to knock adrenaline into his bloodstream. He’s back on his feet and striking again, and now Marcel is smiling again, even though it’s mirthless, even though it’s cruel. “What kind of king falters like that— in front of a prisoner— what kind of—” He can’t land a shot, but he tries. Marcel twists his arm, trips him; Klaus gets his teeth into a shoulder, a slash of nails against a hip. “Coward— weak-willed—”

It’s over when Marcel flips him one more time, and falls on top of him, bodilly enough that Klaus can’t move without striking harder than he means to, without drawing real blood. And this— it’s what he wanted, isn’t it? Marcel is breathing so hard that on every inhale, his chest presses against Klaus’s own. It’s constricting. It’s delicious. 

“I don’t want to hurt you,” Marcel says. 

“I don’t care,” Klaus says, ruthlessly, and considers swinging his head forward enough to get Marcel in the nose. “You called me your  _ charge _ . You said...” 

“That I’d take care of you,” Marcel says. He runs one thumb along the edge of Klaus’s lip. It comes away red. 

“You asked what I want. What if I want...” Klaus can’t say it. He presses his hips up instead, and lets them say it for him. Marcel groans and drags his hands from the floor, to Klaus shoulder, to his neck; applies pressure, just enough. “You said you’d give me— what I want.” 

“Within reason,” Marcel says, like an offer. 

“Yes,” Klaus says, too fast, he knows, “yes,  _ yes _ —” 

“No,” Marcel whispers, and squeezes tighter. “You wanted a king— you wanted someone else in charge. That means I’m in charge. That means you don’t always get what you want.”

“Please,” Klaus says, salt against his tongue. He curls his hips forward again, and feels Marcel respond, for a moment, before his weight is gone, suddenly, and Klaus is back on his feet, light-headed. And then Marcel is back, a goblet in his hands, and he hands it over. It’s warm enough that steam spirals from it; Klaus has it to his lips before he can think about it, a thirst he’d forgotten in favor of other hungers reemerging. 

He drinks to fast and stumbles back, and Marcel catches him, more bodily than necessary, a solid shape at Klaus’s back, one hand around his waist.

“I take care of what’s mine,” he says against Klaus ear. 

“Not,” Klaus says, and swallows. He’s thinking a little clearer, though with Marcel’s lips brushing the nape of his neck, it’s a tenuous thing. “Not for sport. Not for spectacle.” He turns in his arms— doesn’t think to pull away. “Nobody sees this. This isn’t... I can’t...” Marcel’s hand at his neck, drifting— at his chest— his hip— the placket of his jeans. Marcel’s mouth at his neck, his teeth pressed against it, just a hint of a bite. “Please,” Klaus says, and drops the empty cup. 

* * *

Marcel has him against the wall, clothing shoved out of the way more than removed, dust falling from cracks in the plaster, a new one every time he drives forward, every time Klaus slams himself back. He keeps one hand fisted in Klaus’s hair, his teeth open and dragging against skin that would give, so easily, if his fangs slid free. Klaus cannot hear himself--the whimpers, the cries for  _ harder, more, you said, take care, again _ — over the rush of blood in his ears, Marcel’s own choked-off noises, the vibrations that they make in the house’s foundations. When he comes, it’s with Marcel’s hand around him, Marcel’s voice saying  _ there, that’s it, let me, give me, again _ , Marcel’s body holding him up, Marcel inside and around him, entirely. 

Marcel lets him down slowly, Klaus’s legs slow to give from where they’d locked in place around Marcel’s hips. But give they do, and give again, once he has his pants up and there’s no need to stay standing, not for now. 

Marcel laughs at him. “We should probably clean up, before...” 

“Before?” Klaus asks warily. 

“Before everything dries,” Marcel says, and Klaus would find it endearing, how he can’t meet his eye to say that, if it wasn’t for how mortifying he finds finding that  _ endearing _ . And worse, Klaus thinks, how red his own cheeks feel. 

“No,” he says. “Time enough for that later.” But he takes Marcel’s hand when he extends it, and comes to him when he draws him in. 

“I’m only going to clean you up to get you dirty again,” Marcel tells him, low, like a promise. Klaus does his best to keep his expression calm, to keep Marcel’s attention away from the heat growing between his legs. But Marcel presses him back against the wall again, one leg between his own, and the game is up. “But maybe that’s not what you want. Maybe you want me to take you back upstairs, tie you to the headboard, and—” 

Klaus kisses him. It’s involuntary—he didn’t know else to quiet him, to make this stop, all of it too fast, all of it a course for destruction, lit up in his veins— but even that is too much, and he pulls away with a breathless groan. 

“What did you do to me?” he demands, as though his hands aren’t up the back of Marcel’s shirt, as though he isn’t biting at a lip that knows Marcel intimately. “What have you  _ done _ ?”

“Gave you what you needed,” he says. 

“Do it again,” Klaus demands. “Here— upstairs— downstairs— I don’t care. Again. Tie me up. Hold me down. Take me apart. Break me, I want— I want—” 

But he does it again— that slow tenderness, his hands soft against Klaus’s cheek, every kiss that Klaus struggles to turn returned sweet, thorough. 

“Don’t,” he protests. “I want—”

“I believe you,” Marcel says. “But let me show you your options.” 

* * *

_ I can, take, more,  _ Klaus says, when it starts and stays at the same tender pace, but upstairs, it’s slow, and thorough, and Klaus turns his face into the pillow when it gets too much, every nerve in his body aligned to the way that Marcel moves above him, every sensation syrupy as a southern summer, too hot, too rich. 

“Look at me,” Marcel says, when Klaus is close.

“I can’t,” Klaus tries, “I’m too— it’s—” But there, the spark of pain he’s been looking for, one hand rough against his jaw, almost hard enough to bruise. And Marcel above him, lit by the half light; and his hand soft, thumb soothing circles against, Klaus’s hip; and the hand on his chin sliding to his throat to linger, still soft, but present, encompassing; and the wetness in his eyes that he can’t control, the hands he doesn’t know what to do with— he comes with a cry, and it’s bigger than the last one, somehow, longer, and he clings to Marcel’s shoulders, too tight, maybe, but he doesn’t know what else to hold onto, doesn’t know how else to be. 

And Marcel, right behind him, brushes a kiss against the corner of his jaw, tugs with his teeth against his ear, against the jut of his collarbone, and it’s sweet in a way that will kill him, he thinks, in a way that he can’t digest, and he comes again, a shock of an afterthought, a tremor that rocks him into silence. 

Afterwards, he clings, still— he can’t help it. Marcel moves to pull out, and he says “Wait,” before he thinks about it, before he wonders,  _ for what _ . Marcel rolls them over, like that, so Klaus is above him, and Klaus lands his forehead on Marcel’s shoulder and stays there for a moment, too warm to move, too warmed, too moved. 

“I don’t understand,” he says finally. “I don’t like that I don’t understand this.” 

“Do you need to?” Marcel asks, and brushes a kiss against the top of his head. Klaus shudders. 

“It’s too much,” he says, instead of answering. 

“It’s a moment of peace,” Marcel says. 

“Show me again,” Klaus says. “Show me tomorrow. Just.” 

Marcel uses his hair to get him to turn his face up— doesn’t mention the tear tracks, the blood at the corners of his lips, the bruises bitten below them. Kisses him once, soft, complete. Lets him nestle in and say nothing; allows for a moment of peace. 

**Author's Note:**

> I called the series A Kingdom, A Castle but let me for a moment stress both the KING and the DOM alrighty goodnight.


End file.
